Skill training suggestion: Skill pre-training (skill opening)

The main concern I have about the current skill training system is the feeling of it. I think it's good for it to act as a gold sink and I'm sure the values will be properly balanced at the future, but the fact that you first gain nondescript points while adventuring and then you gain skills by buying them with those points and gold feels too forced. It also will raise some issues when trainers are more specific (you must first train to save skill points and then go to the trainer to use those points to buy the mystical rank 5 skill. If you complete his ardous quest before having enought points, it's just moot).

So, inspired on how we do things on my weekly tabletop RPG, I suggest moving the order of skill training a bit, so the net effect is the same but in a way that, I believe, will make the gameplay feel better.

They flow I propose is:

1. First, the player goes to a skill trainer and pays him to "open" skill ranks. That enables him to latter spend points on those skills. (From a RP perspective: the trainer has taught you the theory and then said to "go into the wild and gain experience until you find how to properly use the skill")
2. Then the player kills things, builds things, or does whatever he needs to do to level up and get skill points as usual.
3. Finally, the player can spend those recently earned points on the skills he had previously opened at a trainer. Spending skill points on previously opened (i.e.: trained) skill ranks can be done at any time and place.
4. If the player "forgets" a skill, he'll need to open again if he wants to train it again, as usual.

That feels much more natural to me, as it better approaches on how we learn (we get formal training, then practice, then master the skills ourselves). It also addresses some concerns, like the one when leveling from X9 to X0 into the wild and suddenly becoming a worse fighter because of slug cards. As a bonus, detaching "skill opening" from "skill point expending" makes it easier for some trainers to open skills based on quests or other events instead of gold, and then the player will just expend enough points on them when he has them available.

To balance things a bit and prevent wealthy players from suddenly open everything for themselves and then just gain levels and train skills at will I'd add the following limitations:

• A player can only open 2 or 3 ranks for a skill above your current rank in it (ie, if you don't have Gust, you can pay to open ranks 1 and 2, but no more. Once you spend skill points on it to reach rank 1, you can go to the trainer again and open rank 3 or wait until you've leveled it to 2 and then open ranks 3 and 4). (From RP perspective: You can't learn the basics and the advanced theories at once, first you master the basics and then study more to get better).
• There is a maximum on how many skill ranks a player has in opened state. That limit could be based on ranks themselves (ej: only 5 opened ranks) or skill point value (ej: only ranks worth 200 skill points at max), the latter case perhaps being level-dependent. You can "forget" an opened skill the same way you forget a fully trained one, but then you have to pay for it to be opened again. (Again, from RP perspective: noone can be learning about too many topics at once, there is a point in which efficiency and focus starts diluting, so better be centered in a handful at a time).

What do you people think about this?

 

I think that even though it would be a much better choice than what we have now, this game needs something completely different. Enough with levels and point allocation. Every time I'm trying to convince a friend to play this game and they ask me how is it, I got to say "It's like WoW but more underdeveloped", of course after such an answer none of them will bring themselves to pay $45 for a watered version of WoW but that is the truth and I wouldn't lie about it.

 

Personally, that feels a bit complicated to me. The way *I* gain skills is by encountering the situation. I can figure most things out for myself with practice and time, but some tasks, like performing surgical operations, shouldn't be performed with trial-and-error learning. So instead someone shows me. It's not a big amazing training montage, someone just steps up and says "use that tool for that procedure, do this, then do this." and I memorize a sequence and move forward. If I get stuck in a weird place, I figure something out. Later on a skilled individual might say "Hey, I notice you do X1, but if you do X2 it will work better." and my technique improves.

My point is that a complex sequence of having people perform mystic ceremonies of opening a skill or training you in a skill or improving your skill feels wrong. Perhaps there are certain techniques that the game devs don't want us spontaneously evolving, but I favor leveling and gaining skill in the wild, bit by bit. I like the idea of an on-use skill system, as UO had, and player practice and experimentation discovering almost everything else. I should literally be standing around curing leather and curing leather when it suddenly occurs to me that I can use a different type of fat to cure the leather differently, and I try it and spend a bit of money, nothing huge, on raw materials that I waste, and then bam, new recipe. Going to a recipe vendor who has written instructions to craft literally thousands of things feels very weird. Paying a trainer gold to suddenly gain faster gathering time, or a more powerful death touch feels VERY forced.

 

Well, it would be nice if skill training actually did involve a sequence. So, for example, I've suggested a friendly combat, "spar", option kind of like the fistfights in Skyrim that end before anyone passes out. Skyrim also has sequences where mages train you in certain magic techniques. So, for instance, it would be nice if you went to a swordsman to train, and he demonstrated a technique to you, and gave you the opportunity to practice the technique back with him.

 

Of course, my suggestion is nothing more than a tweak on the current system. It's based on the asumption that the devs will continue forward the current approach, just changing the flow of events while mantaining the basic elements (visiting trainers and spending gold and skill points gained by leveling on learning skills) which, I believe, mitigate many of the flaws it currently has.

I'm all for different approaches to skill learning, though. I'm quite partial to learn-by use, actually, but I'm suggesting this as a way to improve the current system in case the devs stick with it, to have more options and discussion than just a polarized "how it is now or something completely different". If they were to change the core of it, this post would become obsolete.

 

In real life I can go somewhere and learn certain skills by taking a course from someone who knows how to do it. This is the equivalent to going to a vendor and buying a recipe. Not really forced at all.

And if you want to play around experimenting, go for it. That system exists in the game as well. But if someone wants to go to school to learn how to craft something, they should be able to do that

 

What happens when the player forgets to "open" up the skill at the trainer? Do they just waste their time until they realize they aren't getting any skill points?

And the player still has to assign the points, and go to a trainer, so I fail to see how further adding the limitation that you have to open a skill first before you get the points is an improvement.

Finally, how do you use a skill that you've only unlocked at a trainer and haven't actually learned yet? There would need to be individual skill pools for every skill tree, so if you used a weaker power in the skill tree, you would gain points for that tree. Which could only be done if the game used active-use skill gains, like UO.

 

I'm sympathetic to the effort to introduce more realism into the game but I see this mechanic playing out like this: Visit trainer; Gobble up all the skills in an effort to open them all. Unless you introduce restrictions, but then it gets complicated.

One can always choose to play this way. Within an RP group it may even be expected.

In the end I think it is better to offer the flexibility and opportunity for us to make our own rules and stories. Recall the UO dev story about players using chests to block others. Instead of introducing a rule they introduced an ax.

 

Ah, but going to school not only teaches you recipes, but also gives you actual skill, eg producer levels and the talent points they bring. This too is realistic.

 

The skill pool would be unchanged from how is it now, this is not a change from how it works now, but a simple rearrangement (see my previous post). Leveling would still add skill points to the global pool so you could just level and then go to the reainer and spend both gold a points the same way we do now. And of course you couldn't use a skill until you had spent skill points on it. The only thing this suggestion does is to allow you to separate gold spending from skill point spending, so you can buy them at a trainer prior to the actual leveling and skill acquiring, so you can gain those skills on the field as you level up, instead of having to go to the trainer after gaining each level ot just walk around with unused skill points but apart from that, it would be exactly the same as it is now.

 

Might as well be part of the 'apprentice master' Kickstarter stretch goal.